Zacharias To Open First Night of General Assembly
Dr. Ravi Zacharias, founder, chairman, and CEO of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, will be the keynote speaker for the Wednesday, July 25, 2012 opening service of the 74th Church of God International General Assembly in Orlando, Florida. The announcement was made by Church of God General Overseer Dr. Raymond Culpepper.
The General Assembly will begin on July 24, 2012 with three sessions of business conducted by the General Council. Following morning and afternoon business sessions on July 25, Zacharias will address the assembly in the evening service at the Orange County Convention Center.
Ravi Zacharias
For 36 years Ravi Zacharias has spoken all over the world and in numerous universities, notably Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford. He has addressed writers of the peace accord in South Africa, the president’s cabinet and parliament in Peru, and military officers at the Lenin Military Academy and the Center for Geopolitical Strategy in Moscow. At the invitation of the President of Nigeria, he addressed delegates at the First Annual Prayer Breakfast for African Leaders held in Mozambique.
Dr. Zacharias has direct contact with key leaders, senators, congressmen, and governors who consult him on an ongoing basis. He has addressed the Florida Legislature and the Governor’s Prayer Breakfast in Texas, and has twice spoken at the Annual Prayer Breakfast at the United Nations in New York, which marks the beginning of the UN General Assembly each year. As the 2008 Honorary Chairman of the National Day of Prayer, he gave addresses at the White House, the Pentagon, and The Cannon House. He has had the privilege of addressing the National Prayer Breakfasts in the seats of government in Ottawa, Canada, and London, England, and speaking at the CIA in Washington, DC.
Dr. Zacharias was born in India in 1946 and immigrated to Canada with his family twenty years later. While pursuing a career in business management, his interest in theology grew; subsequently, he pursued this study during his undergraduate education. He received his Masters of Divinity from Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois. Well-versed in the disciplines of comparative religions, cults, and philosophy, he held the chair of Evangelism and Contemporary Thought at Alliance Theological Seminary for three and a half years. Mr. Zacharias has been honored by the conferring of a Doctor of Divinity both from Houghton College, NY, and from Tyndale College and Seminary, Toronto, and a Doctor of Laws from Asbury College in Kentucky. He is presently Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University in Oxford, England.
Dr. Zacharias has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge University, where he studied moralist philosophers and literature of the Romantic era. While at Cambridge he also authored his first book, A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism, updated and republished in 2004 by Baker as The Real Face of Atheism. His second book, Can Man Live without God (Word, 1994), was awarded the Gold Medallion for best book in the category of doctrine and theology, and Jesus Among Other Gods (Word, 2000) was nominated for a Gold Medallion. In all, Mr. Zacharias has authored or edited over twenty books, including Walking from East to West (Zondervan, 2006), The Grand Weaver (Zondervan, 2007), and Beyond Opinion (Thomas Nelson, 2008), which includes contributions from Ravi Zacharias International Ministries’ global team. His latest books are The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists (Zondervan, 2008) and Has Christianity Failed You (Zondervan, 2010). Several of his books have been translated into Russian, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Spanish, and other languages.
At the invitation of Billy Graham, Mr. Zacharias was a plenary speaker at the International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam in 1983, 1986, and 2000. He is listed as a distinguished lecturer with the Staley Foundation and has appeared on CNN, Fox, and other international broadcasts. His weekly radio program, “Let My People Think,” is aired on more than 1,700 outlets worldwide, and his weekday program, “Just Thinking,” on over 400. Mr. Zacharias and his wife, Margie, have three grown children. They reside in Atlanta.
